Augustine and Simul Iustus et Peccator (1)

Martin Luther is famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) for his insistence that redeemed man is simul iustus et peccator, at once righteous and sinner. The doctrine is especially useful for coming to terms with how one can be fully justified before God and yet struggle with remaining sin.

Henry Chadwick, in his delightful Augustine: A Very Short Introduction (of which I might post a brief review here in the future), points out that Augustine has his own version of the idea:

Even the best and holiest of believers, he once declared (CD xix.27), knows that in this life ‘our righteousness consists more in the remission of sins than in perfection of virtues’. The baptized believer is both just and a sinner (P 140.14f.; E 185.40). For Augustine this confession of the believer’s continual need for pardon was enhanced by his strong sense of the nothingness of the creature before the sublimity of God. Here was language to fire Martin Luther. (p. 63)

In two posts, I’d like to examine the two passages that are cited regarding an Augustinian simul iustus et peccator. The first is from his sermon on 141 (140 LXX), found in his Enarrationes in Psalmos.¹

Text

14. Postremo, quia in corpore Christi es, et adhuc portas mortalitatem quamdam; tu tibi esto iustus, et in te esto iustus. Peccator es, vindica in te; redi ad conscientiam tuam, exige de te poenas, crucia teipsum. Ita enim offers sacrificium Deo. Quia si voluisses sacrificium, dedissem utique, ait peccator, holocaustis non delectaberis. Quid ergo? nullum accipit sacrificium? Sacrificium Deo spiritus contribulatus; cor contritum et humiliatum Deus non spernit. Humilia cor tuum, contere cor tuum, crucia cor tuum; et tu ipsum emendabis in misericordia: non enim odisti te, cum saevis in te. Eris in parte emendante iustus, quamvis sis adhuc in emendanda peccator: ex qua parte enim tibi displices, iniustus es; ex qua tibi displicet in te quod iniustum est, iustus es. Vis videre quam iustus es? Hoc in te tibi displicet quod et Deo: iam coniunxisti te voluntati Dei, et in teipso non quod ille fecit, sed quod ille odit odisti. Ex eo quod odisti in te quod fecisti, quod odit et ille qui hoc non fecit, coepisti in te esse severus; erit ille misericors: parcet, quia tu non pepercisti. Ergo ex quo coniunctus es oculis eius, et condelectaris legi eius, et hoc in te arguis quod lex eius arguit, et hoc in te tibi displicet quod et oculis Dei displicet, vide quam iustus es: ex quo autem lapsus fecisti ea quae displicent Deo, et fragilitate quadam infirmitatis humanae prolaberis in illa, et adhuc portas infirmitatem carnis, et gemis cuiusdam reluctationis conscientia, ex hac parte iniquus et peccator es.

15. Quomodo, inquies, ex quadam parte iustus, ex quadam parte peccator? quid est quod dicis? Laboramus, videmur loqui contraria, nisi nobis subveniat apostolica auctoritas. Audi illud ab Apostolo, ne me malus intellector accuses:Condelector enim, inquit, legi Dei secundum interiorem hominem. Ecce iustus. Annon est iustus qui condelectatur legi Dei? Unde ergo peccator? Video aliam legem in membris meis, repugnantem legi mentis meae, et captivum me ducentem in lege peccati. Adhuc bellum adversus me gero, nondum sum totus instauratus ad imaginem fabricatoris mei; coepi resculpi, et ex ea parte qua reformor, displicet mihi quod deforme est. Ergo quamdiu ita sum, quid spero? Infelix ego homo, quis me liberabit de corpore mortis huius? Gratia Dei per Iesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Gratia Dei quae coepit iam resculpere, gratia Dei quae infundit suavitatem, ut iam per interiorem hominem condelecteris legi Dei: inde caetera sanabuntur, unde et ista sanata sunt. Geme adhuc vulneratus, castiga te, displice tibi.

Translation

14. Finally, because you are in the body of Christ and still carry about a certain mortality, you be just to yourself, and be just against yourself. You are a sinner, take vengeance upon yourself; betake yourself to your conscience, exact punishments from yourself, crucify yourself. For thus you offer sacrifice to God. Because if you had wanted sacrifice, indeed I would have given it, says the sinner; you will not delight in whole burnt-offerings. What then? Does he accept no sacrifice? Sacrifice for God is a crushed spirit; a heart bruised and humbled God does not reject. Humble your heart, bruise your heart, crucify your heart; and you will correct yourself in mercy: for you do not hate yourself, when you vent your anger against yourself. You will be just in the part [of you] that chastises, although you be still a sinner in the part that must be chastised. For with respect to that part in which you are displeasing to yourself, you are unjust; with respect to that part in which that which is unjust in you is displeasing to you, you are just. Do you wish to see how just you are? This thing in you is displeasing to you which is also displeasing to God: already you have joined yourself to the will of God, and you hate in yourself not what God did, but what God hates. From the fact that you hate in yourself what you did, which he also hates who did not do it, you have begun to be stern against yourself; he will be merciful. He will spare you, because you have not spared yourself. Therefore, insofar as you have been joined to his eyes, and you delight in his law, and you rebuke in yourself this thing which his law rebukes, and this thing in you is displeasing to you which is also displeasing to the eyes of God, see how just you are; insofar, however, as, having fallen, you have done things which are displeasing to God, and, due to a certain frailty of human weakness, you have fallen into those things, and you still carry around the weakness of the flesh, and you groan because of the consciousness of a certain struggle, in respect to this part you are unjust and a sinner.

15. How, you will say, [can a person be] just in one part, a sinner in another part? What is this that you are saying? We are struggling, we seem to say contradictory things, unless apostolic authority should come to our aid. Hear that [word] of the Apostle, in order that a person with bad understanding may not accuse me: “For I delight,” he says, “in the law of God according to the inner man.” Behold, [he is] just. Isn’t he just who delights in the law of God? Whence, then, [is he] a sinner? “I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and leading me captive in the law of sin.” I still wage war against myself, I am not yet wholly renewed according to the image of my maker; I have begun to be refashioned, and in accordance with this part in which I am being reformed, that which is deformed is displeasing to me. Therefore, for how long I am thus, what do I hope for? “Unhappy man [am] I, who will free me from the body of this death? The Grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The grace of God which has now begun to refashion, the grace of God which pours agreeableness in, such that now according to the inner man you delight in the law of God. Thence the rest will be healed, whence also those [aspects] have been healed. Groan as one still wounded, chastise yourself, be displeased with yourself.

Comments

In this selection, it is evident that Augustine connects the simul iustus et peccator idea not with (in Protestant terms) justification, but rather with sanctification. This is clear, for example, from his use in paragraph 15 of Romans 7. At the same time, it is interesting to observe in what precise respect the sinner being sanctified is iustus. From paragraph 14, it seems that it is not by what we might call a “positive” holiness arising from particular good works (“I did x, y, and z today”), but from agreeing with God’s judgment against our own sin (recall the passage from City of God cited by Chadwick above: “our righteousness consists more in the remission of sins than in perfection of virtues”)–though he does say in 15, of course, that the “inner man” of the redeemed delights in God’s law. No one should find this objectionable, since he is simply quoting the Apostle Paul. For Augustine here, then, insofar as we agree with God in his judgment of us as sinners, chastise ourselves for sin, and “wage war” against ourselves, we are just: just because we recognize our injustice, and groan over it.

There is much truth in this; it is probable that every Christian knows the struggle to which Augustine refers. Still, it is not quite the Reformation idea–but it points the way toward it. The Reformers, and Luther especially, understood that getting right with God, at its very core, comes not by humility, but by faith: not sola humilitate, but sola fide. But what do we do by faith? Part of what we do is to agree with God’s judgment of us as sinners. We hear the verdict that everyone who sins deserves death, we recognize ourselves as sinners, and we agree with the verdict. But we say further that the judgment against sin that we merited was manifested on the cross of Jesus Christ, where he fully paid the penalty due for sin. By faith we assent to God’s judgment against us and receive his remedy. By faith we lay hold of Christ and his righteousness–Christ crucified, resurrected, and ascended. If that is the case, then the justice that is ours is in the first analysis extra nos, aliena a nobis, though it is also worked out in nobis as we grow in faith, hope, and love, as we are “renewed according to the image of our maker.”

1. The translation below is my own, but you can find an older one here, and the most recent translation here.